


bared borders, bottomless

by keeplovinanyway



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Depression, M/M, POV Outsider, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-26
Updated: 2018-08-26
Packaged: 2019-07-03 00:39:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15807795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keeplovinanyway/pseuds/keeplovinanyway
Summary: It's 2014. She's a therapist. Her client is Mr. Howell, who has steered relatively clear of who he shares his life with. Today, he talks about Phil (a bit).





	bared borders, bottomless

“So, how are you this week, Mr. Howell?”

“It’s… kind of stressful at home right now… I guess.”

She is taken by surprise by that one, although she tries not to let it show. Mr. Howell doesn’t talk about his day to day life on his own accord usually, and they’ve not gone far enough into their therapy sessions that she’d have pushed for that specifically. They’re still building a working relationship, and there’s enough topics that he wants to bring up on his own.

“Yeah? Is that what is affecting your mood right now the most?”

She looks down at her notepad and jots down _first mention of home situation_. It’s always a difficult line to toe, how much to write down, but she does need it for memory support and her documentation. And sometimes, especially in delicate and sensitive moments like right now, it seems like a good filler element to let the client process somewhat in privacy what they want to say next.

“I don’t- no, not the most, it’s just.” Mr. Howell sighs. He seems kind of annoyed, and she wonders at whom. “It’s always been the thing that I was the most sure about and right now it’s- no, I am still sure about- … it. I am not doubting…- It’s just another point of concern at the moment which makes all the rest of it, the depressed stuff, so much harder.”

She takes a moment to let that sit. There’s a lot of directions she could steer this to: The annoyance, the pauses where he doesn’t name whatever his home life entails, the way he defends something she hasn’t actually put into question.

“So in the past, your home life has been more of a support, and now you feel like you’re on your own?” She finally settles onto.

Mr. Howell nods. 

“Kind of. It- is still supporting me, in some ways, but it is tense lately and… I feel-” He swallows and looks down. “A bit alone, I guess.” The last bit he says quietly, as if he’s not allowed to.

_Feels alone_ , she scribbles. 

“That must make things harder. Mr. Howell, we haven’t had a chance to talk in detail about your closest relationships and your living situation. Do you want to tell me a little more about who is part of your support system?”

Mr. Howell looks- uncomfortable at best. She decides to continue on a bit.

“We’ve established early on that you decide what things you share and which ones not. That is relevant here just as much as it is for all other topics we discuss. If you don’t want to tell me a detail, you can say so. Do you have an idea of who you see as your support system?”

He nods jerkily. His leg is  jerking up and down. When she asked about his life in the first session, where she did all the usual questions to get to know her clients and their situation, he’d looked just as tense. She’d assumed it was mostly nerves about a first appointment, but these nerves seem to be back in full force now. 

“Um. My- roommate? Phil.”

“He’s the one you’ve said you lived with for several years, right?”

“Three years in August.”

He counts the months to the moving in anniversary with his roommate? 

“You’re close then, if you remember this so clearly?”

“Yes,” he says, proud and stubborn and scared all at once, “we’re best friends.”

Best friends. She smiles at him, takes effort to make it warm and welcoming.

“How has that been? Living with someone so close to you?”

Mr. Howell relaxes and looks out the window. She really can’t push this. She thinks he might be  queer . She is herself, and she knows both from that and from her experience in therapy how people talk about their partners if they are not sure whether they can state the kind of relationship they truly have.  S he also knows that it takes trust, and time to build exactly that.  Especially for someone like Mr. Howell, who’s looked at her closed off and anxiously in the very first session as if she’d spring something scary at him any moment, and told her awkwardly about his job as a YouTube star in the second session and how very important it was that she didn’t tell anyone about any of this. (Of course she wouldn’t. She had a license to keep that she worked very hard for, thank you very much.)

“It’s good, mostly,” he says. “He just- gets me. And he’s like the kindest person ever. He’s been there through- a lot of shit. When I quit uni for example. And he always talks me out of my crises. When they- are the ones we can talk about at least. And I am not a useless potato laying in bed all day.”

She bites back a smile. 

“Didn’t we talk about the ways in which you’re not useless, Mr. Howell? If you identify as a potato that is fine with me, whatever you identity is will be accepted here, but let’s make it a useful potato, shall we?”

Mr. Howell laughs, clearly taken by surprise. He’s told her about having tried several other therapists before her and she wonders whether they frowned on his black humour. He’s the kind of guy to joke back  at , she’s seen  right away .

And he takes notice of what she tells him  via subtext , she  notices as well . Good.

“So, Phil- he’s helped you with the things you’ve been going through for a while now, right?”

“Yes. He’s always been there and- I don’t know where I would be without him. I’d say a lot more miserable, although I am not sure that’s possible. Dead, maybe.”

They’d talked about his suicidal thoughts a few sessions back. He’d listed his friends as one of the reasons why he wouldn’t have wanted to act on them.

“So he’s been very crucial to how you’ve been coping in the past. How is your relationship with each other and the things you are dealing with at the moment? You said it’s tense – what exactly has changed?”

He looks down at his hands,  halfway hidden behind the too long sleeves of a shirt that sits tight on his slender body. He reminds her of the kids she thought were too cool for her back in the day, only that it seems like he is just desperately trying to fit in whatever he thinks he must fit into.

“I don’t know what’s changed. I don’t even know whether it’s him.”

He pauses, but she just waits. It seems like a wait-y moment.

“He still asks how I am doing. And is supporting me and stuff. But… well, for one, he looks at me all worried when he doesn’t think I see. And it’s almost like… he’s overly polite.” He gets more agitated at that and looks her in the eyes again. “It’s like he doesn’t want to ask what I do here in therapy. Or he asks, but it’s so hesitant. And I don’t get it, why he can’t just act normal.”

“Has he supported you going to therapy?”

“Yes! Yes. He’s wanted I go for much longer, actually. Which is why he makes no sense. It’s like it makes him uncomfortable that I am going now.”

“Have you talked to him about this?”

Mr. Howell hesitates. “No- not really. He’s- hard to talk to about these things sometimes. He doesn’t like conflict and- I don’t know. It’s weird.”

It’s weird. She wonders what is weird. Mr. Howell talks about his- Phil (she notices she makes the same pause as he does, the gay pause she knows so well) in a way that matches what she perceives of Mr. Howell himself: That he’s not used to talking about his struggles, and that it makes him uncomfortable to do so.

“Do you talk about your therapy sessions at home?”

“No. That’s weird too. I don’t know how much to say and what I want to say and all of that. I have no idea how any of this works, to be honest.”

S he sits back in her chair and examines him. He’s not much younger than her actually. She gets his insecurities. Sometimes, you just need to hear that what you are experiencing is… normal.

“Well… There are no general rules. What kind of things and how much you share from therapy in your personal relationships differs for people a lot. But it is known that going to therapy can change these relationships and put a strain on them – specifically for romantic relationships, but also all other kinds. People in relationships develop certain ways of communicating and relying on each other, that change up when one of those persons changes up their own ways of dealing with things. For example, if in a couple one partner consistently supported the other through social anxiety, say, making phone calls for them or ordering their food, and then the anxious partner starts doing these things themselves – that can change their dynamic. There’s less support needed, or other types of support, and the ways in which you’re used to acting around each other are shaken up. Going to therapy is a quite common stressor for any kind of relationship.”

He looks at her like she’s told him he’s going to fall apart. Damn, was it the wrong choice of action?

“You seem to me like hearing that scares you. What about that scares you, Mr. Howell?”

Whenever she says things like that, he looks caught out, like he isn’t aware of how clearly his emotions are written all over his face. It must be hard, she thinks, in a job like his, to feel so much  with hardly a chance to protect it all.

“I’m not scared,” he says, defensively.

She chooses to wait.

Mr. Howell sits and fidgets and looks at his finger nails. They’re bitten down.

“We are- Phil and I- we’ve gone through stuff. He wouldn’t- I mean, we would stay… best friends. That can’t change.”

“I am not saying it will. I am asking whether you are scared that it might.”

He bites his lip.

“It’s just weird right now. It’s never been so weird.”

Perhaps discussing that fear is for another time – perhaps it’s too early, too less out in the open about who Phil is to him. 

“What, do you think then, would make it less weird?”

His look is one of surprise. She gets that a lot. That’s why she turns the questions around like that, because they get people out of their head and onto the path of solution. (At least, that’s how she intends them.)

“Um… I’m not sure. If he just asked normally about it, I don’t know?”

“Okay… yeah, that would probably be easier. But you can’t really control him, can you?”

“I wish, he keeps eating my cereal, I wish I could stop that.”

She laughs. “That would be handy. But alas, I regret to inform you that you are only in control of your own actions. What can you do, Mr. Howell, so you arrive at that place where you can talk normally about your therapy sessions with each other?”

“I guess… just talk to him? I don’t know?” 

He sounds so petulant sometimes. She almost grins.

“Well, I am sure it isn’t ‘just’ for you – if it were that simple, we wouldn’t have to talk about it here. These type of conversations can be tricky and very hard for anyone, if they’re not something you are used to with the other person. We can talk about how exactly you could bring that conversation up, if you’d like. Do you think having such a talk would help with the tenseness you feel at home?”

“Yeah- I think it would help. I just don’t really know how to talk to him about it.”

“We can figure that out together.” She smiles at him. “In the beginning of the session you said, it’s stressful at home. Is there more to it than this weirdness you’ve described, that seems to center around how you talk about your therapy sessions?”

She thinks there is more. Mr. Howell goes very still and holds himself like he braces for something to say- but he doesn’t, then.

“No,” he says, and looks down. 

“Alright then. Okay, so...”

She looks at the clock for a moment, about half an hour left, she could-

“Actually…-,” he says, determined. His eyes are full of challenge – at himself or at her, she’s not sure of.

“Yeah?”

He wipes his hands on his skinny black jeans that he’s wearing. 

“Maybe there’s… another thing?”

The challenge is gone and been replaced by a world full of insecurity.

“Do you want to tell me, what this thing is?”

He swallows and looks down. There’s a  lose thread in his jumper that he picks at.

“I don’t think I can,” he whispers. 

She feels pride – this is the first time he’s dared to tell her directly that he’s not comfortable talking about something, and he’s still let her know  about it on his own . That is success, even though he probably doesn’t see it that way.

She lets warmth shine through her voice as she replies.

“That is okay, Mr. Howell. Thank you for me telling me about it anyway. Do you think you’d like to talk about it at some point in the future?”

He looks up at her, surprised yet again. 

“Yeah,” he says and smiles just a little bit. “Maybe next time?”

“Maybe next time,” she confirms and smiles at him as well. “Now, if you want to, how about we talk more about the harmful beliefs you have about yourself that we discussed last time? Did you fill out the sheet I gave you?”

He nods and bends down to shuffle in his backpack. She should probably make some notes if she doesn’t want to forget anything important, but instead she takes a moment to look at him. She liked him right away, but she wasn’t sure he would like her as well. She thinks they’re getting somewhere, though.  They’re going to figure him out, she believes that.

And she really ought to hang up that pride button she’d had in her office for weeks now somewhere. It can’t go on like this, fellow queers doubting her acceptance. Better step up her game.

He hands her the sheet and she puts it down on the coffee table between them. 

“Alright then, let’s take a look at this...”

**Author's Note:**

> I was very nervous to write and post this for a while - but that's the point of this challenge, isn't it? Let me know if you liked it via a [Kudos] or a [Comment] (I will be so excited about an e-mail that I got a comment, omg I'll smile so wide) - I would appreciate it a lot!
> 
> Talk to me about this fic or about anything else on [twitter](http://twitter.com/keeplovinanyway), [tumblr](https://heartfeltfangirl.tumblr.com) or [Pillowfort](https://pillowfort.io/keeplovinanyway)!


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